The London address is dubbed ‘Red Square’ because it is the hometown of the ‘close friend’ of Russian tycoon Putin

Eaton Square is nicknamed Red Square due to the amount of Russian-owned properties there. Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich bought a £28m house there in 2003

Built by the Grosvenor family of landowners, and named after Eaton Hall, their Cheshire country home, the history of Eaton Square in London couldn’t be more English.

Located in the heart of Belgravia, the five-story Georgian townhouses overlooking six manicured private parks are among the most coveted addresses in the UK. But many of the UK’s residents are non-taxpayers, and most likely Russian oligarchs with some of whom have had past ties to Vladimir Putin.

Eaton Square is nicknamed Red Square due to the amount of Russian-owned properties there.

Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, who is worth £10bn, bought a £28m home there in 2003 – one of a number of mansions he owns in London. Another tycoon with a fortune on the square is aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, believed to be worth £3 billion. He is said to be close to Putin, and has stated that he is the prime minister’s “most favorite industrialist”.

Many Russians have invested large sums of money in London amid rumors of some Russian money being circulated through untraceable shell companies registered in tax havens.

An investigation by Transparency International has identified properties worth a total of at least £1 billion bought in posh areas of London using suspicious funds from Russia.

There is no suggestion of anyone named using suspicious funds.

Others with assets in the capital include former Arsenal’s largest shareholder, Alisher Usmanov, whose fortune comes from metals and mining. He owns the 11-acre Beechwood House in Highgate, North London. Billionaire Eugene Shvidler is said to live in Belgravia.

London-based financiers are among the 0.01% of Russians who own more of the country’s wealth than the bottom 99.8%. Many of Russia’s 144 million people live in poverty, and since the President has no real competition in elections, he can afford to focus more on 0.01%.

Investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, who has taken bus tours of oligarchs’ mansions, writes: “No one has done more to move money out of Russia than an army of lawyers, owners, and lawyers. London banking and accounting; no one is more lenient with Putin’s oligarchs than British politicians; and therefore no one is to blame more than us for the fact that the richest man in Russia can see war as a spectator sport. “

Critics say the government must do more to prevent some oligarchs from hiding money here, as they could provide Putin with a treasury of finances. By siphoning off properties in London, the Russians were able to disguise the origin of their money.

Following the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergie Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, former Prime Minister Theresa May launched a crackdown.

But in 2020, the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee Report on Russia called Russian influence in the UK the “new normal”.

Russian-born donors or individuals with business links to Russia have given almost £2m to the Tory party or constituency associations since Boris Johnson took power in July 2019, the number data from the Election Commission showed.

Labor leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has called for new anti-corruption measures, writing recently: “During the nearly 12 years of the Tory administration, the creeps of the Kremlin have been allowed to pervade the Kingdom. Brother.”

Seven hundred wealthy Russians were among those allowed to enter the UK on Tier 1 investor visas between 2008 and 2015 in return for £2 million, a period that the state did not check. The Department of Home Affairs is reviewing all visas issued during that period. If Putin invades Ukraine, some oligarchs in Belgravia could find their assets frozen. For now, however, London remains the city of choice for many who benefited from the breakup of the Soviet Union.